I took my 16-on-Friday son with me to the caucus tonight. I had trouble keeping him interested past an hour and a half, so I took him home (six blocks) while people were still signing in. I returned for the meeting, and am a senate district delegate. Our town split completely down the middle, numbers and demographically. Nearly 200 came back for the caucus. When I got back home and we watched some returns and got talking about it I could see he is interested, and I lit a bit of a fire under him telling him about our meeting. I think that tomorrow at school it might just be useful to him that he experienced part of it. The Democratic process isn't very tidy, but it is interesting. When he was complaining about the crowd and the heat, I pointed out to him that these people have been waiting eight years for someone to care about their vote, so they were more than willing to stand in line a few minutes longer and let the officials certify their signatures on the caucus forms.

I think that was the best part of this for me today, seeing that my son is familiar with the process, that he gets something more visceral than a classroom discussion.

I consider this remark entirely appropriate for the MOAB thread, by the way. We are talking politics, after all. It is a powerful component (at least it is something to be understood in the context of Dubya's operation, though he fouled the place so much his BS is bound for the toxic waste dump, not the compost.)

"This week, we have a find in Arctic Canada that dates from the emergence of terrestrial vertebrates out of the seas about 375 million years ago. It's been known for a while that the lobe-finned fish were critical intermediaries in this process, but there were multiple changes involved in the transition, and the sequence in which they fell into place remained unclear. The new fossil, of a species named Tiktaalik roseae (Tiktaalik is the word for large, shallow water fish in the Inuktikuk language of Nunavut, where it was found) bridges that gap:

Although the body scales, fin rays, lower jaw and palate are comparable to those in more primitive sarcopterygians [the precursor fish], the new species also has a shortened skull roof, a modified ear region, a mobile neck, a functional wrist joint, and other features that presage tetrapod conditions.

In other words, most of the body was very fish-like, but the top of the head and neck were very much like those of the first amphibians. Meanwhile, much of the eventual terrestrial limb, including the shoulder, elbow, and parts of the wrist, were in place at the forelimb level, but not in the hind limb. Even the forelimb still ended in a fin, rather than digits, though. Although this beast was a predator, with a vaguely alligator-like head, the researchers suggest that it took advantage of its ability to drag itself onto land to escape predators. This is both because it would have moved too slowly to hunt down prey out of water, and it's unclear whether any prey was out of the water at the time. " (Ars Technica--4-06)

If we keep on finding missing links at this rate we'll be back to square one. Or something like that.

Here's a question: does anyone know whether Big Bang theory asserts that space as well as matter began with the Big Bang? Or was space itself an existing initial condition of the Big Bang? Was the expansion generating apce as well as all matter? (Why does this feel like asking an adult hard questions about God?)

EIther way, I don't think we understand space very well; just as most fish do not know they are wet.

I once caught a fish that grabbed a towel and dried itself off as soon as I got it out of the water.

As for your other question, Amos -- since space and time appear to be linked just as mass and energy are, did time exist before the Big Bang-o? If it did (and I'm talking Time, not just duration), was space created from time when the fuse hit the powder? Or are Space and Time and Mass and Energy all linked -- different aspects of the same thing, perhaps?

Well, I guess my question as written has to be answered "No". Big Bang theorists count the development of the Universe from the big bang in nano- and atto-seconds. But all I have heard them talk about is the energy transformation in those time spans.

As for the apparent dependency of time on space, I think it may be illusory. I think space and mass are somehow tied together and brokered in terms of gravity, but I am not sure why this should be so. Psychologically, space is a variable -- a function of the postulated viewpoint of dimension. How that mirrors in the material universe, I dinna ken. Psychologically, time is sort of handy construct that says everything is the same thing as the thing it was before, just persisting., The belief in persistence is they key; it has a certain rotten flavor to it that gives it the lie. How this translates into the lovely time-phases of material spacetime I dinna ken.

And so I was curious how the Big Bang is viewed in terms of space itself. It is mindumbingly hard to think about sometimes, so I don't do it very often.

"At the instant of the Big Bang, the universe was infinitely dense and unimaginably hot. Cosmologists believe that all forms of matter and energy, as well as space and time itself, were formed at this instant. Since "before" is a temporal concept, one cannot ask what came before the Big Bang and therefore "caused" it, at least not within the context of any known physics. (At least one cosmological theory, however, predicts that our universe's Big Bang is part of a chain reaction in which the demise of one universe spawns the birth of many, parallel, universes. According to this scenario, our universe may simply be part of a huge, infinitely growing fractal.)

Science tells us nothing about the way space, time and matter behaved in our universe's earliest instant, from the time of the Big Bang to 10^-43 seconds later. Space was certainly expanding--violently--and from this expansion of space was formed a highly energetic soup of particles and antiparticles.

The energy was so great during the this so-called Grand Unification Epoch--a fine-sounding name for the period from 10^-43 to 10^-35 seconds after the Big Bang--that all matter and energy was essentially interchangeable and in equilibrium. What's more, electromagnetism and the two nuclear forces were as one (gravity, the fourth and weakest force, had separated from the other three at the beginning of the Grand Unification Epoch)."

"As the universe expanded, it cooled down. At 10^-35 seconds, the temperature was a mere 10^27 degrees K (water boils at 373.16 K or 3.7316^2!). At this critical temperature, the universe underwent a phase transition, something like the process that happens when liquid water freezes into ice. The strong nuclear force--which acts at very short distances and holds protons and neutrons together--split off from the other forces. Physicists call this process "symmetry breaking," and it released an enormous amount of energy.

Then, in an extraordinary instant that theorists have dubbed "inflation," the universe expanded exponentially. During this time, the universe grew by a factor of 10^50 in 10^-33 seconds. Talk about runaway inflation!

This scenario, much as it strains credulity, neatly explains several different observations made during the last 20 years--the large-scale smoothness and apparent flatness of the universe among them--that had weakened the original Big Bang theory of cosmology based on a much more leisurely period of expansion.

Things slowed up a bit after the inflationary epoch. A number of observations, well supported by theory, suggest that our universe continued to expand, albeit more slowly, and that it is expanding still.

As space expanded, it continued to cool down. Matter--at first photons, quarks, neutrinos, and electrons, and then protons and neutrons--condensed out, all less than one second after the Big Bang. It was not until one billion years later, when the universe was one-fifth the size it is today, that the matter would form the first stars and galaxies."

If, as I suspect, Time and Space are related to Mass and Energy -- that is, all are manifestations of the same thing -- then we would have a sheaf of continuums spread from a central point:

(((((((((((.))))))))))

That central point would be the Big Bang. I will have to investigate what happened inside the Bang, at the exact "moment" when it happened.

Of course, these sheafs would have spread multi-dimensionally, in more than the four (or possibly five) dimensions we normally deal with. More of a point within what is at this "moment" (as far as we can perceive) a constantly expanding hypersphere.

I don't think that this would have to be an infinite number of dimensions, but certainly a large number. Let's see: a point can be defined as the intersection of two lines, only without the lines of course. This intersection would require multidimensionalality, and perhaps it's therein that the key to the initial point of "Big Bang"-ness lies -- that the nearly infinite density, etc. of that point would force multidimensionality by its very existence. Hmmm...yes, this is seems to be an "Uncaused Cause" sort of reasoning...

Gravity: is this some form of energy and if so, how does this work with Mass? Can we create gravity during Mass/Energy conversion?

It seems to me that politics is becoming more & more a matter of how to get votes from the careless, ignorant and superstitious ....and those who are single issue voters... than of appeal to the folks who read, study and care.

MOM! It's supposed to snow on my daffodils again! They're predicting an accumulation of up to 2 inches overnight tonight. It's March! This is Texas, a Southern state, fercrhistsake! Enough of this already!

My compter's a little faster, they managed to speed up my DSL to about half of what I'm paying for, instead of 1/5 of what I'm paying for. The tech said there are only three DSL accounts in the neighborhood and they're all faster, but the phone company won't let anyone else get DSL because we're too far from the phone company switches. Funny, there's an office just down the road. . . if I have to stay indoors at least I can get more done on the computer.

It's all right, dear. Mom is going to buy you full cable-quality broadband this year, so nect winter you'll be able to snuggle up and cruise zippity-zip all day. Assuming this winter ever ends.

You do realize this is Texas' DIvine Judgement for not doing right by the Democrats, don't you? If you'd only sent Obama in without any quibbles, you'd be frolicking in sunlight and daisies. But nooooo....

We are all submerged in a sea of almost undetectable particles left over from the first few seconds of the big bang, according to the latest observations from a NASA satellite. The Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) has confirmed the theory that the universe is filled with a fluid of cold neutrinos that remain almost entirely aloof from ordinary matter.

Cosmologists think that in the hot, dense, young universe, neutrinos should have been created in high-energy particle collisions. About two seconds after the big bang, the cauldron of colliding particles would have cooled down so much that most would not have had enough energy to interact strongly with neutrinos. The neutrinos would then have "de-coupled" from other matter and radiation. In theory, they should still be buzzing around, a soup of slippery particles that by today has been chilled to a temperature of only 1.9 ° Celsius above absolute zero.

Now WMAP has found evidence of this cosmic gazpacho. The spacecraft, launched in 2001, has been building up a picture of the cosmic microwave background radiation, which carries a detailed imprint of the state of the universe 380,000 years after the big bang. In particular, it reveals the pattern of density fluctuations in space, the "texture" of the early universe.

Travelling at nearly the speed of light, neutrinos should have discouraged matter from forming tight clumps, and so smoothed out the texture of the universe slightly."

It was postulated as an explanation of the positron (e-) that as a fish moves through the water and notices water only by its absence (that is, bubbles) we live in a sea of electrons and notice positrons as the absence of electrons. The positrons occur when an electron is knocked out of its position the the electron "array" by a gamma or other ray and the positron thus formed "disappears" when an electron fills the hole.

I'm sorry I wasn't clear in my earlier post. This explanation was first given back in the 1930s by Fermi or Bohr or Heisenberg or somebody famous whose name escapes me at the moment.

The problem with things that we notice only by their absence, is the overwhelming magnitude of the set. Start a list of things that you can plainly see are not there, and by George, you'll be up all night!!

As for names which escape you, I fully sympathize. Those artful dodgers are too slippery for words. They dig tunnels, adopt disguises, hide in out-bound laundry, smuggle themselves in delivery vans -- ANYTHING to get out of their proper holding area. I have tried redoubling my surveillance and patrols, but it just costs me sleep at night.

1. A positive balance in my checking account. 2. Completed and filed income taxes. 3. A little man upon the stair. 4. A positive balance in my savings account. 5. Wise, courageous leaders who work for the good of everyone.

I received a telephone call from a woman who said she worked directly for the Idaho State Police Association and that she wanted to send me a decal and the money raised would go to help officers who were injured or even killed in the line of duty and could they count on my support?

I paused to collect my thoughts and then told her that last year my brother was killed in the line of duty by a couple of meth dealers who first shot him and then, as he lay bleeding, stomped him to death.

She really didn't know what to say.

After I hung up I promptly called my brother and apologized for killing him. He said that he understood and he'd be happy to kill me the same way if the need arose. I think this is the second or perhaps the third time I've killed him.

I have little patience with organizations that purport to collect money for those who have suffered tragedy in their lives but which keep up to 90% of the money raised for "administrative costs."

I once told a salesman for a photo company that I couldn't have pictures taken of my children even though my wife and I very much wanted them, I had been wounded by a "castrator mine" in Vietnam. I was "sobbing" as I said this; NOBODY called again for three years. Now I'm on the "Do Not Call" list.

I've also told callers for political candidates that "I wouldn't vote for that goddamned Commie bastard if s/he were the only one running!" and then I launch into an imaginary speech about WHY the person is a "Commie." This is even more effective if they ARE the only one running as it confuses the caller.

I do like killing off my brothers, however. And they don't mind at all.

"But even an endeavor of this scale isn't going to answer all the important questions of matter and energy. Not a chance. This is because a century of particle physics has given us a fundamental truth: Reality doesn't reveal its secrets easily.

Put it this way: The universe is a tough nut to crack."

See, there's the rub. In my view it comes down to the question, "What could we know if we didn't already believe we know what we learned to know?"

I suspect there is a deep shift needed in our approach, and what makes sense to me is shifting from particle physics to spationics. Either that, or turning over the whole fielsd to psychologists, to create the subject of psionics. I think the whole "Chase me, I'm a particle" flirtation has gone too far, so to speak.

The trouble is no-one really has the first idea of how tof ormulate the fields of spationics OR psionics, because we don't "know" how. It's a damned conundrum, is what.

"The preferred name for the God particle among physicists is the Higgs boson, or the Higgs particle, or simply the Higgs, in honor of the University of Edinburgh physicist Peter Higgs, who proposed its existence more than 40 years ago. Most physicists believe that there must be a Higgs field that pervades all space; the Higgs particle would be the carrier of the field and would interact with other particles, sort of the way a Jedi knight in Star Wars is the carrier of the "force." The Higgs is a crucial part of the standard model of particle physics—but no one's ever found it.

Theoretical physicist John Ellis is one of the CERN scientists searching for the Higgs. He works amid totemic stacks of scientific papers that seem to defy the normal laws of gravity. He has long, gray hair and a long, white beard and, with all due respect, looks as if he belongs on a mountaintop in Tibet. Ellis explains that the Higgs field, in theory, is what gives fundamental particles mass. He offers an analogy: Different fundamental particles, he says, are like a crowd of people running through mud. Some particles, like quarks, have big boots that get covered with lots of mud; others, like electrons, have little shoes that barely gather any mud at all. Photons don't wear shoes—they just glide over the top of the mud without picking any up. And the Higgs field is the mud"...

Janie, this is a really well-done article and a good find. Thanks.

I suspect the Higgs boson may be the spation of which I spoke. Maybe the field will be called bosonics.

Not to be confused with bos'nics, which is the art of luring young ladies up to the foc's'le locker.

THe notion that a sea of Higgs' bosons is what imparts variable degrees of mass to all other particles, I mean.

In the most fundamental definition I know of, mass is defined as "resistance to acceleration". Acceleration of course is the change of rate of movement through space. The strange limiter of c on velocity is tied to the fact that it is the nature of space that it seems to increase mass of particles when they approach that speed. And the more mass, the more resistance to accelerating particles.

Well, suppose an equation were to be formulated that said S=m/c^2, or something like that -- in other words, defined a relationship between mass and "space".

Two interesting consequences, sketchily appearing, are:

1. That increasing mass with acceleration approaching c could be defined as space approaching infinity because "going faster adds to the amount of space carried by the particle". This would in some wise simplify the measurement of continua, I suspect.

2. The psychological link is tantalizing also. Consider that an individual's sense of space is a function of his viewpoint, and his ability to look at different spaces at will is one index of his psychological well-being. You can build a whole model of human dysfunction and therapy around the priciple of restoring space and command of space tothe viewpoint of the individual. There is a strong implication in all this that space is a function of a viewpoint generating dimensionality, in other words. To cut a long explanation short, suppose the relationship between space and mass on the side of the space-time continuum had a corrollary relationship between space and viewpoint on the consciousness side. THis could lead to a unified theory not only of space-time-energy, but of mind and matter. A single theory which harmonized the spectrum of phsyics studies and the spectrum of consciousness or psychological studies.

The notion of a big sweet unified construct addressing all these critters sure is temptin', ain't it?

Amos, the formula is S=e(c/m^2). c/m^2 is called the "Constant Constant" and defines the amount of ignorance in the Universe. Ignorance, of course, is neither created or destroyed, but simply rearranged.

I like your approach to telemarketers, Rapaire. I would hire you if I could afford it, but I'm totally strapped now due to having to hire all those other people to remove all the insulting things I said about Amos in previous posts on this (and other) threads.

We're talking about a project that could still be going on years from now. It rivals the building of the tower of Babel, only it's sort of the opposite way around.

If it weren't for all the dreadful and pretentious codswallop that Amos deluges this forum in all the time I wouldn't be in this unpleasant posi---

My gawd, Rapaire! You may be on to something there; the notion that negative values of S are the governing principle behind ignorance is breathtaking in its possible implications!! That could also explain the tensions that keep recurring in human dynamics, such as tribal spats, wars, and global warming. If the value of -S is constant, then all interactions between viewpoints within the frame of reference in which the constant prevails atre just tugs of war for more or less of it. This explains why the terrorists hate us, too. THey're jealous of our Space! Someone call the White House.

Depends on whether matter is something you view, or something you identify with, LH...

"Theoretically, the big bang should have yielded equal amounts of matter and antimatter that annihilated each other, leaving a largely empty universe. So why is our universe almost exclusively matter? The movements of distant galaxies and supernovae hint that the dark expanse of space holds vastly more matter and energy than we see in all the stars and galaxies. The LHC could shed light on this dark matter and dark energy."

Now, the LHC is turning into a really interesting tool, by expectation, anyway.

THis means Europe will march ahead of the US in being the leading front of physics endeavours.

I don't mind if it means we'll get a little closer to FTL drives, hyperspace transits, and anti-grav field generators.

I just knew I was being conspired against today. Quantum physics, a theory of everything, LH trying to refrain from insulting Amos, HIPPAA compliant forms for the new practice, the resurfacing of an HTML practice thread, and the disappearance of the first time I typed and posted this into the far, lost reaches of cyberspace.

I tell you, I am not paranoid, this is a cosmic conspiracy!

Oh well. Think I'll go forth and make a PB&J sandwich for lunch. Not only will I be comforted by the warm, fuzzy childhood memories thus evoked, I'm also confident of my ability to digest it.